Main: Beef Cheek Daube with Fennel and Rum
From June 2020 Delicious Magazine (The Chef & The Butcher)
Dessert: Honey Vinegar Pie with Spiced Whipped Cream
From June 2020 Delicious Magazine (Larissa Takchi)
Beef Cheek:
“This meat comes from the cow’s cheek muscles and is one of the cheapest but tastiest cuts of beef. Well-loved for it’s meltingly tender texture, the cheek is best suited to slow cooking, taking in the rich flavours of wine and spices, and is pure heaven served with mashed potato”
Hi everyone!
Just loving the opportunity to cook these beautiful slow and flavoursome casseroles with the arrival of the colder weather. Let me start then by saying that I have not had success with beef cheeks in the past, I prefer chuck steak, however I wanted to try again. And so, the Beef Cheek Daube. The flavour is absolutely beautiful and much like beef bourguignon only much, much more complicated, messy and time consuming.
This recipe needs to be started a day ahead for marinating purposes.
It is an expensive dish to prepare using 6 cups of red wine (and we want decent quality) as well as 3/4 of a cup of dark rum. So you might like to weigh this up before embarking on it for your family. I found it fiddly because you marinate the vegetables along with the meat and then have to pick the meat out to brown it. (Who knows maybe I was doing it wrong but I read the recipe several times). I adore the recipes in Delicious Magazine but I do feel that there is a certain amount of assumed knowledge expected of the cook and I like everything spelt out – are you the same? Anyway, I also picked out the cinnamon quills and the bay leaves before browning the meat. You may be saying “well dah!” but I just feel that should have been mentioned. I had great success with the beef cheeks this time as they were mouthwateringly tender. The overall flavour with the fennel, alcohol and citrus rinds was very interesting. Served on mash it was a winner albeit $$$. 9/10
Dessert on the other hand was easy. It’s an American pie which uses vinegar rather than lemon. The pie came to life in the 19th century when Americans had to make do with what they had and fruit was hard to come by. Vinegar on the other hand was available all year round and so the vinegar pie was born. This in itself was intriguing so just had to give it a go. I used a 24cm pan although it called for a 22cm one but who can store every different size pan. Not me that’s for sure. So store bought short crust pastry makes the preparation of the pie crust very straight forward. Got a feeling though that they didn’t have sheets of frozen pastry back in the early 19th century. The filling is custardy and you could prep this the day before needed and just top with the spiced cream before serving. Combining sour cream, cream, brown sugar and cinnamon really makes for a beautiful topping that could be used with so many other desserts, even just on the side of fresh fruit. 8/10. Finished off the next day by the MAV of course.
Final analysis from me? The point of this blog is to give you my honest opinion and please keep in mind it is just my opinion. I would just go for a beef bourguignon and not bother with this daube but definitely give the pie a go.
Until next week.
From my table to yours with love x
